Blending

To set up the Osterizer jar blending system, you remove the large bowl that comes with the blender and set it aside permanently, unless you are making large quantities for multiple people at a gathering. The blade assembly on an Osterizer consists of a rubber or rubber-like sealing washer, the stainless steel blades mounted on a metal plate, and a threaded plastic or metal base. These three components unscrew from the bowl as a unit.

Aajonus noted an important problem with the washer that comes standard with the Osterizer: it is too thin and too small in diameter. It falls easily into the jar, gets caught in the blades, and causes leaks and messes. The solution he recommended was to obtain a washer from a Cuisinart blender instead. The Cuisinart washer is larger in diameter and thicker, so it seats properly on the rim of a standard canning jar and creates a reliable seal. He acknowledged that hardware stores and small appliance stores may refuse to sell a Cuisinart part for use on an Osterizer because it is technically illegal to sell a replacement part designated for one machine for use on another. However, the Cuisinart washer is the correct size for the job.

The assembly procedure is as follows: place the Cuisinart washer on the rim of the canning jar first, then place the blades inside the jar with the metal plate resting on top of the washer, then screw the threaded base on top, and finally invert the entire assembly onto the blender motor base so that the jar sits upside down. This creates a closed environment. When the blender runs, no new air enters the jar. The food blends in a sealed space, the gases from the food itself mix with and neutralize the residual oxygen, and nutrient oxidation is prevented or greatly reduced.

One important safety caution from the written instructions: before blending, confirm that the blades do not strike or cut into the glass jar during operation. If one blade strikes the glass, bend it upward slightly so it no longer makes contact. This is most likely to happen with 4-ounce jars, the smallest size. He also specified absolutely not to blend any substance harder than shelled raw almonds in a glass jar, because a harder substance can cause the jar to break and injure someone.

Choosing the correct jar size for the quantity of food being blended is essential to the method working properly. The principle is that the jar should be filled to a level that leaves very little air space. If the jar is too large for the amount of food, excess air remains inside and oxidation still occurs. If the jar is too small, the contents may overflow or the food may not blend adequately.

Aajonus used and recommended canning jars in the following sizes: 4 ounces, 8 ounces, 12 ounces, 16 ounces, and 32 ounces (quart). He mentioned that these are standard Ball canning jars with a regular small mouth, which is approximately 2.5 inches in diameter, not the wide-mouth jars which have a 3.25-inch diameter mouth. The Osterizer blade assembly fits the regular small-mouthed jars.

For small single-serving sauces, 4-ounce jars are appropriate. For milkshakes and smoothies, an 8-ounce or 12-ounce jar is typical depending on the volume of ingredients. For larger preparations, 16-ounce or quart jars are used. His recipe instructions consistently specify which jar size to use for each preparation.

When blending something that starts as solid pieces, such as fruit, the food is not yet a liquid when you put it in the jar, so you select the jar size based on the finished volume rather than the starting volume, since the food will compress and liquefy during blending.

He also noted a practical advantage of the jar method: you can drink directly from the jar after blending, eliminating the waste and cleanup involved in pouring from a large blender bowl where food coats the sides and is lost.

Aajonus explicitly rejected the use of plastic containers for blending, even though some blenders come with plastic jars or plastic blending vessels. His reasoning was specific. Plastics contain dioxins. When anything acidic is blended in a plastic container, the acidity breaks down a portion of the plastic, and dioxins leach into the food. He named pineapple and other fruits as examples of acidic foods that would accelerate this breakdown. Glass canning jars are the correct and only recommended vessel.

Most preparations should be blended for only 5 to 20 seconds. Aajonus repeatedly emphasized keeping blending time short. For most sauces, smoothies, and liquid preparations, 7 to 15 seconds on low or medium speed is sufficient. For preparations requiring finer texture, such as nut flours, the blending is done in stages, typically grinding the nuts first on medium speed for 5 seconds, then adding liquids and blending again briefly.

A notable exception is the bee pollen preparation. Bee pollen has a shell similar in structure to a nut shell, which is very difficult to break down. Blending a preparation that contains bee pollen requires 30 to 50 seconds to rupture those shells and release the nutrients inside. A nut formula or nut butter preparation may also require 40 to 50 seconds maximum. These are the long end of acceptable blending times and apply only when necessary.

For the cheesecake fillings described in the recipe books, blending times of 30 to 90 seconds at high speed are specified because the butter, cheese, and honey mixture requires extended blending to become fully smooth rather than grainy. The instruction "do not let it get too hot while blending" accompanies these longer-duration recipes, indicating that heat generated by friction during extended blending is a concern.

For whipping raw cream to stiffness, a high-pitched sound from the blender indicates the cream has reached the stiff stage and the blender should be turned off immediately. The cream must be blended on low speed in a 4-ounce jar with no more than 3 ounces of cream, because the cream needs airspace to swell. In an 8-ounce jar, medium speed is used with no more than 6 ounces of cream. If cream is blended in a full jar with no airspace, it turns into butter rather than whipped cream.

Making raw butter intentionally requires filling an 8-ounce jar with 7 ounces of raw cream, screwing on the blade assembly, and blending on high speed for 90 seconds, then pouring off the whey.

The recipe material specifies speed settings that correspond to the nature of the ingredient being processed. Low speed is used for cream, delicate emulsifications, and preparations where ingredients need to combine gently without overworking. Medium speed is used for most nut flours, sauces combining multiple ingredients, and general blending tasks. High speed is used for preparations that need to become completely smooth, such as cheesecake fillings, date-based dessert fillings, and pulse-action nut crusts.

Aajonus was particularly emphatic about never blending or whipping eggs alone, without some protective coating ingredient present. His position was based on findings from a scientist he cited: whipping or blending eggs exposes the egg white proteins to oxygen, and even two strokes of whipping destroys three specific enzymes in the egg white. Those three enzymes, when present at high levels in the blood, prevent cancer from progressing. Blending or whipping eggs alone, even very briefly, oxidizes and neutralizes these enzymes. He contrasted this with his own practice of sucking eggs directly through a hole poked in the shell, or cracking them into a glass and drinking them down without any whipping.

However, if eggs are blended with a coating substance, the protection changes significantly. Raw cream, raw milk, coconut cream, butter, or any similar fat coats the proteins of the egg white so they do not oxidize during blending. In that case, blending eggs with cream or milk is acceptable. He also specified that even with protective coating ingredients, blending should take place in a small jar with minimal air space to further reduce oxidation.

The distinction he drew was between blending and whipping. He instructed people to whip eggs into vegetable juice by hand, not to blend them. Hand-whipping into an already-prepared juice is different from blending eggs alone in a blender, because the juice itself acts as a partial coating, and the exposure time and degree of aeration is less extreme. But even hand-whipping carries some risk, which is why sucking eggs directly from the shell was his preferred method when eating eggs alone.

When honey is added to a preparation being blended, it must always go in last, immediately before blending. If other ingredients are cold from refrigeration, honey placed in the jar even a short time before blending will turn hard and stick to the sides of the jar. Adding it last and blending immediately prevents this problem.

For the moisturizing lubrication formula and similar butter-containing preparations, all ingredients must be at room temperature or warmer before blending. If butter is still too cold, it will clump and not disperse evenly throughout the mixture. The remedy when ingredients are too cold is to immerse the capped jar in a bowl of hot water for two to three minutes until the butter softens and disperses, then re-blend. Once the mixture chills again and begins to firm after being properly dispersed, that is acceptable, because the even distribution has already been achieved.

Some sauce preparations that include butter call for warming the butter or fat in the capped jar immersed in a bowl of mildly hot water for five minutes before blending. The test of appropriate warmth for immersion water is that a finger can be held in it for four seconds. This is used for warming butter, bone marrow, cream, coconut cream, and similar fats before blending them into sauces, ensuring that the fat is liquid enough to combine smoothly with other ingredients.

For processing solid meat rather than liquids, Aajonus used a Cuisinart food processor rather than a blender. To mince meat at home, he cut it into chunks, placed it in the food processor bowl, tilted the food processor slightly on its side, and ran it for about 30 seconds to produce minced meat. He noted that food processors are very quick to clean, taking about 30 to 45 seconds thoroughly.

The distinction between the food processor and the blender is one of application. The food processor handles solid and semi-solid foods that need to be ground or minced. The canning jar blender method handles liquid and semi-liquid preparations. He also mentioned using a food processor for grinding nuts for crusts, noting that for this purpose he would grind them "just a little bit" rather than reducing them to a fine powder, and adding dates and butter to the spinning food processor so that the mixture clumps together into a cohesive crust material.

Aajonus named the Vitamix explicitly as one of the worst machines available for food preparation in this framework. Its open bowl design draws air down into the food continuously, exactly as any other standard blender bowl does. Additionally, the Vitamix operates at very high speeds, which means it can heat the food through friction to temperatures sufficient to begin cooking the contents. He described seeing people who cooked their juice in a Vitamix within one minute of blending, with temperatures reaching 140 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. He categorized the Vitamix alongside the standard blender bowl as machines to avoid.

Aajonus drew a clear distinction between juicing and blending vegetables. A juicer such as the Green Power, Green Star 1000, or Champion juicer extracts liquid from the plant fiber, leaving the cellulose pulp behind. Blending vegetables in a Vitamix or any other blender does not separate the pulp; it pulverizes the entire plant including the fiber. Aajonus stated that humans cannot digest cellulose efficiently because we are not herbivores, and consuming large amounts of undigested vegetable fiber is not beneficial. If someone blends vegetables instead of juicing them, the pulp must be strained out through a cloth or similar filter to remove it and extract only the juice.

He also described the concept of "puree" as distinct from both juicing and blending in a large bowl. When he recommended adding pineapple puree to vegetable juice, he meant blending the pineapple in a canning jar using the Osterizer method and then pouring the resulting puree into the vegetable juice. Similarly, cucumber puree could be blended into vegetable juice in the same manner, so that the silica-rich cucumber content was incorporated into the juice in a mashed rather than juiced form, allowing for a thicker juice that could be partially chewed.

Beyond the nutritional preservation argument, Aajonus repeatedly emphasized practical advantages of the jar blending method. The jar serves as both the blending vessel and the storage or drinking container, eliminating the need to pour from a bowl into a separate container and losing food to the sides of the bowl in the process. After blending, you can cap the jar with its standard lid and take the food with you, which makes meal preparation more portable. The jar is also easier to clean than a large blender bowl.

When filling jars with vegetable juice for the day, he described filling them all the way to the top so that the juice bubbles up to the surface, which he would lick off before capping. Keeping the jars full minimizes the air space above the juice, which reduces oxidation during storage as well as during blending.

The one context in which some air exposure during blending is structurally necessary is whipping cream. To produce whipped cream, the cream needs airspace in the jar to expand into as it stiffens. The instruction to never fill a 4-ounce jar with more than 3 ounces of cream, and never fill an 8-ounce jar with more than 6 ounces of cream, ensures there is enough room for the cream to swell. The cream is blended on low speed in the 4-ounce jar or medium speed in the 8-ounce jar until the high-pitched sound from the blender signals that stiffness has been reached.

An electric mixer used in a mixing bowl is mentioned once in the recipe sources as a method for whipping cream for a specific topping preparation, but this is the exception rather than the rule and appears in a context where the volume of cream being whipped is larger than a single jar would accommodate.

Drawing from all the recipe sources, the following specific blending instructions appear across preparations:

For barbecue sauce and similar tomato-based sauces: blend all ingredients except onion in an 8-ounce jar for 7 seconds. Onion is stirred in afterward, not blended.

For Béchamel sauce: warm milk, butter, nutmeg, onion, and pepper in a 4-ounce jar immersed in mildly hot water for 5 minutes, then blend on low speed for 10 seconds. In a separate 4-ounce jar, blend sunflower seeds on medium speed for 5 seconds, then add the seed flour to the sauce and blend for 10 more seconds on low speed.

For Bordelaise sauce: blend all ingredients except cheese on low speed for 10 seconds in a 4-ounce jar. Stir in grated cheese afterward.

For Pepita gravy: blend pumpkin seeds into flour in a 4-ounce jar on medium speed first. Add fat or butter, cream, and optional honey, and blend on low speed for 15 to 20 seconds until smooth or until it will not blend further.

For South African Frikkadel glaze: blend pecans in an 8-ounce jar until flour. Add egg, spices, fat, oil, and honey, and blend on medium speed for 15 seconds.

For Spicy Thai sauce: blend walnuts in an 8-ounce jar until flour. Add juices, honey, and coconut cream and blend all together on medium speed for 10 seconds. If ingredients stick to the bottom, remove from blender, shake loose, and resume blending.

For sour cream quick: blend cream and grated cheese in a 4-ounce jar on low speed for 10 to 15 seconds until thick and firm.

For Spice Paste: blend all ingredients together in an 8-ounce jar on medium speed for 20 seconds, then cap and let stand in a cupboard for 24 hours before using or refrigerating.

For Spiced Butter or Oil: warm butter in an 8-ounce jar immersed in mildly hot water for 5 minutes, then blend all ingredients on medium speed for 15 seconds. Oil preparations do not need warming before blending.

For Tango Meat Sauce: blend all ingredients together in an 8-ounce jar for 7 seconds.

For cheesecake fillings in large format: blend butter/cheese/honey mixture on high speed for 60 to 90 seconds until smooth, not grainy, being careful not to let it get too hot.

For cheesecake fillings in small format: blend butter/cheese/honey mixture on high speed for 30 to 40 seconds until smooth, not grainy.

For pie crust nut preparations: blend nuts with butter and honey using pulse-action on high speed for 5 seconds in a 4-ounce jar.

For date-based pie fillings: blend chopped date with fruit in a 4-ounce jar on high speed for 10 to 15 seconds, or in an 8-ounce jar for 20 to 30 seconds, depending on the recipe, until thick.

For ice cream bases: blend all ingredients together in a 12-ounce jar on medium speed for 10 seconds, then pour into an ice cream maker.

For milkshakes: blend all ingredients in an 8-ounce or 12-ounce jar on medium speed for 10 seconds.

For Thousand Island dressing: blend all ingredients in a 12-ounce jar on high speed for 10 to 15 seconds.

For the moisturizing lubrication formula: blend all ingredients together, with all ingredients at room temperature or warmer, until evenly mixed. If butter clumps, immerse in hot water for two to three minutes and re-blend.

For bee pollen preparations: blend for 30 to 50 seconds to rupture the bee pollen shells.

For honey-thickened foam from vegetable juicing: place foam and honey in a small jar, add blade assembly, invert, and blend to thin the honey and turn the foam back into liquid before pouring into the vegetable juice.

When a fermented milk or cream preparation separates into curds and whey, blending it will recombine it into a uniform mixture. Aajonus described this as a simple practical fix when the separation is undesirable and the body needs the components together rather than separated.

When food is blended, the cellular structures are ruptured and the contents are exposed. If the blended food is then left uncovered or left open, the rupture of the cellular walls means the food will oxidize more readily than if it had been sliced or left whole. Sliced food may ferment slightly before being eaten, but since its cells are largely intact, this process is different from oxidation of blended food left open. Once something is blended, it should be capped immediately. The recommendation throughout is to blend just before consuming, keep the jar sealed, and drink directly from the jar.